Organizational learning for exploring Generative AI: CORE-sandbox experiments

Generative AI (GenAI) holds potential for organizations, offering transformative opportunities while simultaneously raising concerns about its associated risks. Like many emerging technologies, GenAI presents organizations with a significant challenge: navigating uncertainty before making large-scale decisions about which systems to adopt and how to implement and leverage them. Managers cannot rely solely on general knowledge of GenAI; they require insights tailored to their specific organizational context. Drawing on an 18-month study of sandbox experiments conducted within a large international service organization, this paper presents CORE-sandbox experiments as a structured framework for systematically learning about the critical dimensions of uncertainty surrounding GenAI. The framework organizes learning into four key domains: Capabilities, Opportunities, Risks, and Ecosystem. The paper also advances the discourse on organizational learning and dynamic capabilities by demonstrating how in-situ and ex-situ learning cycles reinforce one another and how second and third-order organizational learning emerge under conditions of high uncertainty before GenAI rollout decisions are made.